their book, directed to some of their own acquaintance, which they may turn into Latin, period after period, by themselves. To begin therefore with the first Epistle in Sturmius, which may be written down, translated thus:M. T. C. Terentiæ, Salutem plurimam dicit.

Mark Tully Cicero sendeth hearty commendations (to his wife) Terentia. Si vales, bene est, ego valeo.

If you be in good health, it is well: I am in good health.

Nos quotidie tabellarios vestros expectamus, qui si venerint, fortasse erimus certiores, quid nobis faciendum sit, faciemusque te statim certiorem.

We every day expect your letter-posts; when, if they come, we shall be perhaps more certain what we are to do, and we will certify you forthwith.

Valetudinem tuam cura diligenter, vale.

Look diligently to your health, farewell

Calendis Septembris.

The first day of September.

And you may show them how to imitate it, (observing our English manner of writing letters) thus:

To his very loving friend Mr. Stephen Primato, at the Seven Stars, near Newgate, London, these.

Amantissimo suo amico Domino Stephano Primato ad insigne Septentrionum juxta novam portam Londinensem, hasce dabis.

Most sweet Stephen:

If you be all in good health at London, it is very well; we are all very well at Barnet: the Lord God be praised.

Stephane mellitissime :—

Si vos omnes Londini valetis, optimè est; nos quidem omnes Barnetæ valemus: . Laudetur Dominus Deus.

I have every day expected a letter from you, for this whole week together, which, if it come, is like to be very welcome to me; I pray you therefore write to me and let me know what you do, and I will write back again to you forthwith.

Ego quotidie literas tuas, per hanc totam hebdomadem expectavi; quæ si venerint gratissimæ mihi futuræ sunt; oro igitur ut ad me scribas, et certiorem me facias, quid agis, et ego statim ad te rescribam. Give your mind diligently to learning. Studio literarum diligenter incumbe.

Your most loving friend

Amantissimus tuus amicus

Barneta, Octob. 4, 1659.

Farewell heartily.
Vale feliciter

ROBERT BURROWS. ROBERTUS BURROWES.

They may imitate the same epistle again in framing an answer to the particulars of the foregoing letter after this manner, observing the form of composition rather than the words.

To his very much respected friend Mr. Robert Burrows, near the Mitre at Barnet, these deliver.

Observantissimo suo amico Roberto Burrowes, haud ita procul à Mitrâ Barnetæ, hasce dabis.

Dear Robert :

I am very glad I am certified by your letter that you and all our friends are in good health. Lo, I have now at last sent you my letter, which I am sorry

that I have made you so long to look for before it came to your hand. And forasmuch as you desire to know what I do, I thought good to certify you that I am wholly busied at my book, insomuch as I could willingly find in my heart to die at my studies: so true is that which we sometimes learned in our Accidents-To know much is the most pleasant and sweetest life of all. You need not, therefore, persuade me further to give my mind to learning, which (truly to speak plainly) I had much rather have than all, even the most precious jewels in the world. Farewell, and write as often as you can to Your very loving friend,

Charissime Roberte:

STEPHEN PRIMATE.

Quòd ex tuis literis certior fiam, te, et omnes nostros bene valere, magnopere gaudeo. Ecce, nostras, jam tandem ad te misi. Quas, quoniam in causâ fui, ut diutiùs expectes, priusquam ad vos venerint, vehementer doleo. Cùm autem quid ego agam, scire cupias; certiorem te facere velim, me totum in libris esse occupatum; usque adeò, ut vel emori studiis mihi dulce erit: Ita verum est, quod è Rudimentis Grammatices olim ebibimus; Multum scire est vita jucundissima. Non igitur opus est, ut ulteriùs mihi suadeas, studio literarum et doctrinæ incumbere, quæ quidem (ut planè loquar) omnibus gemmis, vel pretiossissimis cupidissimè malim. Vale, et literas quàm sepissime mitte ad Amantissimum tui,

BOBERTUM BURROWS.

Thus you may help them to take so much as is needful and fit for their purpose out of any Epistle, and to alter and apply it fitly to their several occasions of writing to their friends; and where Tully's expressions will not serve them, let them borrow words and phrases out of the books that they have learned, (but especially out of Terence) and take care to place them so that they may continually seem to imitate Tully's form in writing epistles, though they be not altogether tied to his very words. And this I give as a caution both in speaking and writing Latin, that they never utter or write any words or phrases which they are not sure they have read or heard used in the same sense that they there intend them.

It were necessary for them, as they proceed in reading epistles, to pick out all such familiar expressions as are incident to be used in writing letters, and to note them in a paper book kept for the purpose, digested into certain places, that they may help themselves with them as they have occasion; you may see a precedent hereof in Fabritius's Elegantia Pueriles. And because the same phrase is not often to be repeated in the same words, they should now strive to get more liberty of expressing their minds by learning to vary one and the same phrase both in English and Latin, sometimes ex tempore, before the master, and sometimes amongst themselves by writing them down, and then appealing to the master to judge who hath done the best. To enter them upon this work, you may first begin with Mr. Clark's Duxoratorius, and then make use of that excellent book of Erasmus de copiâ verborum, which was purposely by him intended and contrived for the benefit of Paul's School, and I am sorry to see it so little made use of in most of our grammar schools in England.

To encourage them to begin to write of themselves, and to help their invention somewhat for inditing epistles, you may take this course at once with a whole form together, which I have experienced to be very easy, and generally pleasing to young scholars.

1. Ask one of your boys, to whom and for what he is minded to write a let

ter; and, according as he shall return you an answer, give him some general instructions how to do it.

2. Then bid him and all his fellows let you see which of them can best indite an English letter upon that occasion, and in how short a time.

3. Let them every one bring his own letter fairly written, that you may show them how to amend the imperfections you find in it.

4. Take his that hath done the best, and let every one give you an expression of his own gathering for every word and phrase that is in it, and let it be different (if it may be) from that which another hath given already before him.

5. As they give in their expressions, do you, or an able scholar for you, write them all down in a paper, making a note that directeth to the place to which they belong.

6. Then deliver them the paper, and let every one take such words or phrase as is most agreeable to the composition of an epistolary style (so that he take not the same that another useth) and bring the letter written fairly, and turned out of English into Latin. And thus you shall find the same epistle varied so many several ways, that every boy will seem to have an epistle of his own, and quite differing in words from all those of his fellows, though the matter be one and the same.

To help the young beginners to avoid barbarisms and Anglicisms, (to which they will be very subject, if not timely prevented) you may make use of a little English and Latin Dictionary in octavo, which resolves the difficulties of translating either way, and Mr. Walker's useful Book of Particles, which is lately printed; as also Mr. Willis' Anglicisms Latinized, and Mr. Clerk's Phraseologia Puerilis; not to mention Turselinus, or Dr. Hawkins' Particule Latina Orationis, which may be afterwards made use of, when scholars grow towards more perfection in the Latin tongue, and can read them without your help. But for their further assistance in this most profitable and commendable kind of exercise, I commend unto you Mr. Clerk's Epistolographia, and Erasmus' De conscribendis Epistolis; to which you may add Buchleri Thesaurus conscribendarum Epistolarum, Verepaus de conscribendis Epistolis, and others fitting to be reserved in the school library for your scholars to peruse and collect notes out of, at their leisure hours. He that will be excellent in any art must not only content himself with the best precedents, which in many particulars may (perhaps) exceed all others, but also now and then take notice what others have attempted in that kind, and sometimes he shall find the meanest to afford him matter of good use. And therefore I would advise that the scholars in the upper forms may often employ themselves in perusal of all Tully's Epistles, and sometimes in those of Pliny, Seneca, Erasmus, Lipsius, Manutius, Ascham, Politianus, and whatever they find in the school library, (which should indeed be very well furnished with epistolary books) that out of them they may learn to express their minds to the full upon any subject or occasion, to whomsoever they write, and to use a style befitting both the matter and persons, be they never so lofty or mean.

After this form is once well entered to write epistles of themselves, they may make two epistles every week, (one in answer to the other) to be shown fairly on Saturdays, so they do not exceed a quarter of a sheet on one side, because great heed should be taken in the composing of them.

And let this rule be observed in performing these and all manner of exercises, that they never go about a new one till they have finished what they began. It

were better for scholars sometimes to do one and the same exercise twice or thrice over again, that in it they may see and correct their own errors and strive to outdo themselves, than by flipping from one work to another, and leaving that in their hands incomplete, to get an ill habit of posting over business to little or no purpose. Non quàm multùm sed quàm bene, should be remembered in scholars' exercises.

8. Their afternoon lessons on Mondays and Wednesdays, for the first half year (at least) may be in Ovid's little book De tristibus, wherein they may proceed by six or eight verses at a lesson, which they should first repeat memoriter as perfectly as they can possibly, because the very repetition of the verses, and much more the having of them by heart, will imprint a lively pattern of hexameters and pentameters in their minds and furnish them with many good authorities.

2. Let them construe verbatim, and if their lesson be harder than ordinary, let them write it down construed.

3. Let them parse every word most accurately, according to the grammatical order.

4. Let them tell you what tropes and figures they find in it, and give you their definitions.

5. Let them scan every verse, and after they have told you what feet it hath in it, and of what syllables they consist, let them give the rule of the quantity of each syllable, why it is long or short; the scanning and proving verses, being the main end of reading this author, should more than any thing be insisted upon, whilst they read it. And now it will be requisite to try what inclination your young scholars have towards poetry: you may therefore let them learn to compose English verses, and to inure them so to do, you should

1. Let them procure some pretty delightful and honest English poems, by perusal whereof they may become acquainted with the harmony of English poesy. M. Hardwick's late translation of Mantuan, Mr. Sandys of Ovid, Mr. Oglesby's of Virgil, will abundantly supply them with heroic verses, after they can truly and readily make which, they may converse with others that take liberty to sport it in lyric verses; amongst all which, Mr. Herbert's Poems are most worthy to be mentioned in the first place, and next to them (I conceive) Mr. Quarles' Divine Poems, and his Divine Fancies; besides which, you may allow many others full of wit and elegance; but be sure you admit of none which are stuffed with drollery or ribaldry, which are more fit to be burnt than to be sent abroad to corrupt good manners in youth.

2. After they are thus become acquainted with a variety of meter, you may cause them to turn a fable of Æsop into what kind of verse you please to appoint them; and sometimes you may let them translate some select epigrams out of Owen, or those collected by Mr. Farnaby, or some emblems out of Alciat, or the like flourishes of wit, which you think will more delight them and help their fancies. And when you see that they begin to exercise their own wits for enlargement and invention, you may leave them to themselves to make verses upon any occasion or subject; yet to furnish them with rhymes, epithets, and variety of elegant expressions, you may let them make use of the pleasant English Parnassus, composed by the true lover of the muses, Mr. Joshua Poole, my quondam school-fellow at Wakefield, who, like another Daphnis, may truly be said (what I now sigh to write) to have been at the blue house in Hadley Parish, now daily in my sight, Formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse.

When you have taught them truly to scan and prove any kind of Latin verse, and made them to taste the sweetness of poetizing in English, you may prepare them further for making Latin verses out of their present authors, thus:

1. Take a distich or two which they Know not where to find, and transpose the words as different as may be from a verse, and when you have made one to construe them, dismiss them all to their seats, to try who can turn them first into true verses without one another's suggesting. When they have all dispatched, cause him whom you conceive to be the weakest to compare what he hath done with his author, and to prove his verses by the rules of Prosodia. 2. You may sometimes set them to vary one and the same verse, by transposing the same words as many several ways as they can. Thus this verse may be turned one hundred and four ways:

Est mea spes Christus solus qui de cruce pendet,

And sometimes you may cause them to keep the same sense, and alter the words. Thus this distich is found in Mr. Stockwood's Progymnasma Scholasticum, to be varied four hundred and fifty ways:

Linque cupido jecur, cordi quoque parcito, si vis Figere, fige alio, tela cruenta loco.

To direct and encourage your young scholars in turning verses, you may make use of the book last mentioned, and for further instructions concerning making verses, I refer you to Mr. Clerk's Dux Poeticus.

9. To enable your scholars yet more to write good Latin in prose, and to prepare them further for verses by reading poetical books which abound with rich expressions of fancy, I would have them spend the next half year in Ovid's Metamorphosis, out of which author you may make choice of the most pleasing and profitable arguments, which it is best for you yourself to construe and explain unto them, that they may dispatch the more at a lesson, and with more When they come to say,

ease.

1. Let them repeat four or six verses (which you judge most worthy to be committed to memory) by heart.

2. Let them construe the whole lesson verbatim, minding the propriety of the words, and the elegance of every phrase.

3. Let them parse every word grammatically, as they have been used to do in other authors.

4. Let them give you the tropes and figures, the derivations and differences of some words, and relate such histories as the proper names will hint at, which they may peruse beforehand in their dictionary. And let them not forget to scan and prove every verse, and to note more difficult quantities of some syllables.

5. Let them strive (who can best) to turn the fable into English prose, and to adorn and amplify it with fit epithets, choice phrases, acute sentences, witty apothegms, lively similitudes, pat examples, and proverbial speeches, all agreeing to the matter of morality therein couched; all which they should divide into several periods and turn into proper Latin, rightly placed according to the rules of rhetorical composition.

6. Let them exercise their wits a little in trying who can turn the same into the greatest variety of English verses.

Mr. Sandy's translation of this book, in folio, and Mr. Rosse's English Mythologist, will be very delightful helps to your scholars for the better under